From Secondary to Post-Secondary Education
Post-Secondary Education Options
Junior Colleges (JCs) and Centralised Institute (CI)
- For students who are academically inclined and have the necessary GCE ‘O’ Level qualifications. JCs also recognise special talents and aptitudes through discretionary admission. See the section on Post-Secondary Education for reference.
- Offer a 2-year junior college/3-year centralised institute pre-university course leading to the GCE ‘A’ Level examination.
Polytechnics
- For students who wish to pursue applied and practice-oriented training and have the necessary GCE ‘O’ Level qualifications. From 2006, the polytechnics may admit up to 5% of their respective intakes based on students’ special talents and aptitudes.
- 3-year courses are the norm.
- Polytechnic graduates with good grades have the opportunity to pursue tertiary education at the universities.
Institute of Technical Education (ITE)
- For students with GCE ‘O’ or ‘N’ Level certificates.
- Offers 1- to 2-year technical or vocational courses.
- Students who do well will be able to proceed to the polytechnics for diploma programmes. Qualified candidates may also subsequently progress to the universities.
Joint Admissions Exercise
Refer to the Joint Admissions Exercise webpage for more information.
Discretionary Admission to JCs
Discretionary Admission allows JCs to admit a certain percentage of students using their school-based selection criteria.
Key Changes
- For JC 1 discretionary admission, students are selected during the Direct School Admission Exercise using school-based criteria, before the central admission exercises.
- Independent JCs have autonomy on student admissions before the central admission exercises for up to 20% of their intake at JC 1. All other JCs have autonomy on student admissions for up to 10% of their intake at JC 1.
- For JCs with the Integrated Programme (IP) starting at Secondary 3 (i.e. IP Year 1), they have full autonomy to select all their IP Year 1 students using school-based criteria.
Why are we doing this?
To allow our schools to have greater flexibility to recognise a more diverse range of achievements and talents. In turn, we want to encourage students to put more effort into activities and pursuits that they have special interest or talent in.